


in the end you emerge

by denouementt



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Hogwarts First Year, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 11:40:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14080119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/denouementt/pseuds/denouementt
Summary: oliver has had two letters scarring his skin since he was born; he finally learns what they mean when he arrives at hogwarts.





	in the end you emerge

**Author's Note:**

> hi loves!! I got this idea from a tumblr post (the second bullet point of this list: http://marcusflint.co.vu/post/172203554775/soulmate-au-prompts). I love flintwood and this just seemed wonderful for them. plus, little oliver panicking over little marcus was just too sweet to resist.
> 
> tumblr: scorpiusmlafoy

The dimming, yellowish glare from the Snitch nightlight that hovered proudly over Oliver’s bunkbed illuminated his hand with a shadowy glow among the dark canvas of the night. His window was slightly ajar with a soothing, end-of-summer breeze fluttering past the scalloped hem of his curtains to fill his room with a cooling air. Oliver leaned closer towards his calloused skin, squinting his eyes to closer examine the scars decorating the back of his left hand.

Ever since birth there had been two birthmarks painted directly in the centre of his hand; rather than a brown colour they proudly blended in with the rest of his skin, a pink sheen allowing the two marks to be clearly distinct from the remaining expanse of his body. But, for some reason, they were turning _red_ and, for the first time ever, Oliver realised that they looked somewhat like letters. He tilted his head this way and that way, youthful mind desperate to drink up the letters to come to some conclusion of what they could mean. Because, his mind argued, they _had_ to represent something. Oliver knew the letters weren’t normal birthmarks for he wasn’t a ‘normal’ boy.

An eleven year old who would, in two weeks, be travelling to a wizarding school hidden from Muggle civilisation would not fulfil a dictionary definition of normal. Perhaps, Oliver thought, his marks were changing colour because he was worried about starting school. His mother had always told him that his cheeks flushed a gorgeous magenta colour when he worried or stressed over anything – usually the result of a Quidditch match he had been eagerly watching.

Oliver’s sleepy eyes watched as his right hand traced the clearly identifiable outline of the letters. There was a slight pain that filled his body as he outlined them, the skin heating up as his fingertips drifted over the strokes. They were so clear at this late hour of the evening that it looked as if a ghost had taken some red ink and had deliberately drawn over his skin. The thought of a ghost lurking in his room scared Oliver slightly, immediately flicking his nightlight off as he curled underneath the blankets covering his bed. His eyes scrunched shut, ears alert as he tried to hear anything that might suggest a ghost lingering in his room. Moments passed and Oliver resurfaced, establishing that the likelihood of a ghost hiding among his Quidditch-themed room was second to none.

Still, he lay. For what felt like hours he tossed and turned in his bed, thinking over the relevance of the letters brandished on his hand. “M… F.” He murmured, fingers silently tapping over the silky cover of his duvet. He couldn’t think of anything that started with either of those letters, no names or places or events. But they _had_ to mean something, Oliver just knew it. He just had no idea _what_.

\- ⚡ -

“Why have you got a plaster covering your hand?”

Oliver looked away from the window, reluctantly tearing his eyes away from the thicket of wizards swarming Platform 9 and ¾. A boy with ginger hair stood in the doorway of the compartment, his eyes staring desperately into Oliver’s as if to beg _please let me sit in here with you_. His clothes were a little too small, trousers flirting with the top of his ankles and jumper clinging a little too tightly to the boys elongated, thin frame. Oliver smiled; the boy understood the invitation and sat opposite him, hands clamping between his legs as he looked to Oliver.

“I’ve got… sort of. It’s hard to explain,” Oliver started, ever so slightly peeling back the end of the plaster to show the Nameless Ginger Boy his skin. The birthmarks were an even brighter red, looking like raw scars from wounds he’d received hours earlier. “I’ve had these birthmarks for years, since I was born. But they’ve started, like, reddening recently. They weren’t this red the other week. I have no idea what’s going on with them, though.”

“Those aren’t birthmarks.” The Ginger Boy said, leaning closer with a similar eager spirit Oliver exhibited that morning when he noticed the deepening colour.

“What are they, then?” Oliver asked, a glimmer of hope filling his soul that perhaps another wizard could explain this to him. So far nobody – no family member or doctor (Muggle and magic) – could explain it.

“I’m not sure… but birthmarks don’t make those sort of shapes and then definitely don’t change colour that dramatically over time. Look,” The Ginger Boy asserted, dragging up the sleeve of his jumper to show some brown birthmarks decorating his pale skin. “Those are birthmarks. But they’re nowhere near as cool as yours are.”

Oliver grinned; despite the Nameless Ginger Boy not being able to help deduce what the letters on Oliver’ hand meant, he had certainly assured Oliver that Hogwarts wasn’t going to be that bad. He may not have known it at that moment, but Oliver knew that he and this boy had just bonded over birthmarks and that, for the foreseeable future, they wouldn’t be apart regardless of what house they were sorted in.

“I’m Oliver, by the way. Oliver Wood.” He said,, pressing the plaster back down over his inflamed skin. Hopefully the pain and colour would soften before his classes started; Oliver had no desire of explaining to endless people either why he had a plaster on his hand or what the letters meant.

“Percy. Percy Weasley. I think we’re going to be good friends.”

\- ⚡ -

Night drew closer as the Hogwarts Express pulled into Hogsmeade Station much later that evening. Oliver and Percy had spent the remaining train journey playing Exploding Snap on one of their seats while their animals played on the booth opposite them. The scenery beyond the window changed from bright and glimmering from the sun cascading onto the hills to almost mystical and sinister as dark shadows cast over cobbled pathways in the early dusk. A little fall of rain glittered in the light of a lantern being held by someone called Hagrid who beckoned the eager First Years to follow him to some boats.

Their shoes squelched in watery mud below their feet as the bottom of their too-big robes dipped into puddles swelling along the swirling path. Oliver’s freckled face froze from the cooling splash of raindrops splattering his skin as they descended towards a family of boats waiting to carry them across an inky lake. Hagrid ordered them to clamber into the boats, and so followed a swarm of youthful bodies tripping and slipping into the wooden structures. Oliver had taken a boat with Percy, desperate to settle near a familiar face as his whole year clumped around him. As Oliver looked around he suddenly felt overwhelmed; all these people around him would really be the only ones he knew for the next few years of his life. He would live with them, eat with them and study with them: and these realisations all hit Oliver like a sack full of cauldrons to the stomach.

He flinched; Oliver’s eyes sunk down to his left wrist where the reddening colour of his skin had seeped beyond the fencing of the plaster. He reluctantly drew the plaster back and his heart sank as the letters stood more proudly on his pale skin. The ‘MF’ looked more distinct than ever before and Oliver panicked, quickly slapping the plaster back down. He pulled his bottom lip between his teeth, hoping that nobody in the adjacent boats saw his dirty secret.

“Cool! You have them too!” An energetic voice pierced the silence screeching in his ears. He looked up; a spindly finger was pointing to Oliver’s hand and a face full of elation and recognition joined the persons figure together.

“Have what?” Oliver asked, hoping could weasel his way out of a situation where he had to talk about painful birthmarks with anyone new.

“ _Anima Meamica_!” The voice exclaimed, as if that really complex phrase was common knowledge. “Soulmate marks. Certain people are born with them, you see. They’re marks that tell you how close you are to meeting your soulmate. It’s two letters, they’re initials. The initials of your soulmates name. They grow darker the closer you get to meeting them.”

“Oh, Merlin.” Oliver muttered, tearing the plaster off his skin once more. He gently stroked the letters, allowing the adamant pain to swell in his heart again.

“MF,” the voice observed. “Yours are really bright. It means that your soulmate is nearby! I’m jealous. Mine are really faint, still. See, look. Mine are CD. You can’t really tell, but I’m excited to meet them soon, hopefully. You’ll probably meet yours by the end of the evening!”

As much as Oliver wanted to feel overjoyed and at peace at finally knowing the cause and the meaning of the letters painted on his hand, he just couldn’t. His soul was now filled with imminent fear; he’d just been told he was in the proximity of his _soulmate_ , the person he would live with and love for the rest of his life. For a small, eleven year old boy the concept of such a connection filled him with fear. He wondered if it was someone in the boats, if there was someone who had OW decorating their hand.

Before he could think too hard, though, his boat was gently nudging the shore below Hogwarts castle and the flurry of First Years were now scuttling up drive to shelter. The rain had intensified, raindrops so large they were bouncing off the puddles already formed on the leave-covered floor back up into the air for a moment. Oliver wanted two things in that moment; he wanted to get inside, warm and toasty in the Great Hall to start the feast, and to find out who in Hogwarts had the initials MF.

\- ⚡ -

Nobody in their year had the initials MF. As Professor McGonagall ascended through the alphabet Oliver listened with a ferocious desperation through all students with surnames starting with F. Emily Farmer, James Fawn all the way through to Elizabeth Fyre: _nobody_ starting with an M.

Oliver had been sorted into Gryffindor and was greeted with a parade of laughter, smiles and handshakes as he sat at the table, the last of the students to have been sorted. He took a seat next to Percy, also sorted into Gryffindor. Despite being welcomed into this family of red and gold dressed people Oliver felt so distant from them all. The tables decorated with goblets and mountain high food did nothing to soothe the bubbling nerves dancing in the depths of his stomach. Someone, somewhere in this room was his soulmate and they had no idea. Oliver felt restless, like he was being watched by some invisible force pressuring him into deducing who the mysterious MF was by the end of the night.

Oliver’s eyes searched longingly around the entire hall, drinking in the expressions and details on everyone’s faces in hope that something would click inside him to say that _yes, that’s your soulmate._ Face to face he searched, examining how a blonde girl’s lips hung unevenly to the right and a brown-eyed boy on the Hufflepuff table burned red through laughter in a way similar to Oliver himself did.

Nobody stood out to him, no face seemed to strike a match in his soul that gave him a sign of hope. Oliver felt like he was sailing across an endless sea with no compass or map to guide him in the right direction. He was only eleven, Oliver thought, it was incredibly unfair that he was being made to struggle this crisis in silence instead of enjoying his first night at Hogwarts.

“Flint! Stop!”

A voice cackled into the air, followed by a gentle chorus of cheers from the Slytherin table on the opposite side of the Hall. Oliver looked up; there was a boy seated at the centre of the table, robes rolled up to his elbows with his wand hidden under the table. It looked as though he had bewitched a goblet and a knife to duel each other, the two pieces of shining tableware blindly rolling towards each other of the battleground covered in empty plates and profiteroles. The boy seemed to have enticed an audience along the Slytherin table, along with stragglers from the other houses, to watch the battle he had induced.

“Who’s that?” Oliver asked aimlessly to the whole table, not able to tear his sight away from the young-looking boy who grinned at his creation before him.

An older Gryffindor, a fifth or sixth year sat opposite Oliver, seemed to tut. Oliver imagined that the boy had also rolled his eyes and from that reaction alone Oliver knew the Slytherin boy was not someone he would ever want to associate with.

“That’s Marcus Flint,” he explained, not turning to look at the culprit on the other side of the room. “A second-year Slytherin and renowned troublemaker. He’s an interesting one. Since last year he’s got a bit of a reputation for messing about. Probably learned that spell over the summer instead of actually doing productive school work.”

Oliver almost felt his heart _stop_. His words caught in his throat as he processed the name he had just been told. “Marcus Flint?” He asked.

“Indeed.” The Gryffindor confirmed.

Oliver glanced sadly down at his hand towards the two letters that were now taunting him with a blood-red colour. His bottom lip found its way back between his teeth as Oliver began to nervously chew at the already ruined skin. Surely not, he thought. There were probably many students at the school with the initials MF, the likelihood of Marcus Flint being the soulmate were almost impossible.

But something inside Oliver, possibly even the soul itself, told him that he was wrong. As Oliver craned his neck to the side to see through the rows of heads blocking Marcus from his view, he knew that he’d found the initials. Marcus moved into sight again, head tilted back as he eagerly laughed as his goblet warrior snapped in half. Oliver swallowed thickly, fingers of his right hand instinctively going to outline the name burning his skin. He’d pulled his fingertips over the lines so frequently he knew where they were without even looking anymore, but as he did so this time something seemed to cool a little. The pain softened ever so slightly, almost as if his body was rewarding him for finding the person being suggested on his body from birth.

Marcus looked back down and, somehow, caught Oliver’s eye through the aperture between the ocean of students separating them. Marcus grinned, the left corner of his lip inclining as he looked over at Oliver. Something about the face seemed familiar, as if he’d seen this person in some former life that he could not remember the details of. It was scary, but reassuring at the same time.

Marcus looked away after a moment, allowing Oliver to release the deep breath he’d inhaled from the moment they looked at each other. Oliver had known for a while that his time spent at Hogwarts would be the most interesting and exciting years of his life; it was apparent that learning magic and playing Quidditch as he grew up would provide him with great joy and experience. But _this_. Knowing that his _soulmate_ was always going to be in the year above with a grin that could clear any worry from Oliver’s mind filled his heart with an intertwined feeling of fear and excitement. Oliver didn’t know what to expect from the next few years living opposite Marcus, but he deeply hoped that something during their life at the school would bring them face to face; after all, Oliver had spent every day waiting to meet the mysterious MF who had been at the forefront of his mind for the entire eleven years he had lived. Oliver just hoped he lived up to his expectations.


End file.
